AUTOMATION

The Adaptive Machines

Dedicated machine designs are giving way to base machine modules
that are configured to production requirements, reconfigured as
needed and support ‘batch of one’ operations. The result is a new
category of machinery, the adaptive machine. This paper discusses
attributes of adaptive machines and the enabling technologies behind
the movement. Today, automation technologies are being
commercialized that put smart factory functionalities in the realm of
real-world production and packaging applications. This new generation
of machinery is required to cost effectively meet the expectations of
consumers increasingly used to getting precisely what they want,
quickly, online. While additive manufacturing is a promising approach
in many applications, it is not applicable to the majority of food,
beverage, pharmaceutical and household goods production processes.

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Therefore, it will not be a subject of this paper. While production lots,
literally of one product, also don’t fit every product category, the same
technologies apply to automation of rainbow packing, mass
customization, short production runs with frequent changeovers and
producing limited time offers. Batch size one is the ultimate invocation
of these marketplace trends. Switching from glass bottles to plastic, or
from rigid to flexible containers, requires completely new filling and
packaging machinery. Consumer product and package lifecycles keep
shrinking, while SKUs continue to expand. It is impossible to anticipate
all changes -- especially disruptive ones -- that are likely to occur over
the 15 to 20+ year service life of industrial machinery. An adaptive
machine is one that has the capacity to change over on the fly, and
moreover, to reconfigure with different production modules on the
same base machine platform. It will readily be adaptable toconstant
size and format changes. But it will also be adaptable to radical and
unforeseen requirements through corresponding equipment changes,
such as replacing a carton erector module with a pouch forming
module. Adaptive machinery will compare favorably in all aspects of
productivity measurement – OEE, ROI, TCO – as lot sizes shrink and
throughput (leadtime and volume) requirements remain critical.

Innovations Abound
It is the combination of many seemingly small innovations such as
these that combine to enable the adaptive machine: One recent
example is HTML5 based human-machine interfaces that run on
any web-enabled device regardless of operating system. This
makes it much simpler to fulfill the popular concept of deploying
remote visualization on any phone, tablet or computer screen--
without needing to support versions for Android, iOS, Windows,

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Linux or any other operating systems for that matter. The user
experience also improves, because the HMI can now have the
familiar feel and navigation of web pages, benefiting from the
latest HTML 5, JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheet web design
standards.

Another is networked safety, which replaces hardwired safety.

Networked safety has spawned both new diagnostic capabilities
and safe motion, in which the machinery continues to operate in a
safe mode rather than shutting down. Simplifying production of
small batch sizes, software modules to program network
integrated light curtains now make it possible for objects of
different sizes and shapes to pass through without triggering a
safety response – perfect for batch size one products of different
sizes and shapes. Safe robotic control will also be key to the
expanded use of collaborative robots.
Combined with condition monitoring to enable predictive
maintenance and energy monitoring to optimize efficiency, these
software innovations and others, available today, are making the
adaptive machine a practical reality.

Machine applications can now Tweet, sending information via text

message or email to communicate alerts instantly. Automated text
messaging allows a machine application to send text messages and
emails triggered by specific events and can easily be connected to other
software components, such as alarms, to automatically notify a
maintenance technician when immediate action is required.

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